Posted
by
BeauHDon Wednesday January 10, 2018 @07:45PM
from the locally-sourced dept.

Apple's iCloud services in mainland China will be operated by a Chinese company from next month, the tech giant has confirmed, though Apple will still have access to all data stored on iCloud. The company said it had made the move to comply with the country's cloud computing regulations. iCloud accounts registered outside of China are not affected. BBC reports: The Chinese cyber security rules, introduced in July last year, include a requirement for companies to store all data within China. The firm, Guizhou on the Cloud Big Data (GCBD), is owned by the Guizhou provincial government in southern China. Guizhou is where Apple opened a $1 billion data center last year to meet the regulations. iCloud data will be transferred from February 28, Apple said. Customers living in mainland China who did not want to use iCloud operated by GCBD were given the option to terminate their account. Apple said the "partnership" with GCBD would allow it to "improve the speed and reliability of our iCloud services products while also complying with newly passed regulations that cloud services be operated by Chinese companies." It added that Apple had "strong data privacy and security protections in place and no backdoors will be created into any of our systems." However, some on social media have said the step gives Beijing more opportunity to monitor its citizens and others living in the country.

No one is forcing Apple to do anything. They can just close their services to China if they don't want to follow the regulations, same as every one else. Just ask Google.
How about the EU? And all the other countries that do similar things?

Companies must follow the laws of the countries they operate in film at 11.

Microsoft does this with Azure. Their EU operation is run by a separate company, so they cannot be compelled to hand over data to US law enforcement because they have a complete separation and no one in Microsoft has access to the data in the first place (at least, in theory). I believe the other big cloud providers have similar things, because otherwise they can't sell hosting to any company that needs to comply with the GDPR (i.e. anyone in the EU).

No other country imposes this kind of rule. China won't let data be stored outside its borders, fine. But it won't let a foreign company own and operate a data center within its borders, so Apple now has to pay the Chinese government to use servers in a datacenter owned by the government. So, since the government own the servers on which any Apple user's data would be stored, it has access to the user data and Apple's data. IP ripe for harvesting.

Apple is "voluntarily" doing this because the only other option is the complete loss of Chinese access - and probably all Chinese assets including manufacturing and intellectual property. How long could Apple survive if the PLA starts selling "knockoff" Apple phones and computers that are built in previously-Apple-controlled factories by previously-Apple-controlled technicians? After nationalizing all the Foxconn facilities?

China is _Literally_ the Exact opposite of a free market. The state controls every aspect of business, you're allowed a certain latitude as long as you don't step on anyones toes. But in the end the state owns everything and everyone.

We keep losing disks on Azure, but keep still being billed for them. That's annoying, but of course having servers crash and having to set them up again from scratch is a bigger problem. The highest level person we've talked to at Mindtree is Sonal Kathel, but even he doesn't even have permission to look at vms or disks so he can't help. Microsoft is providing the worst of both worlds. Support that isn't trained, can't escalate, and can't even view info about what they're supposed to support.

The other half of the walnut is: what protections is Apple putting in place to ensure that once the PRC's intelligence agencies have penetrated the data center and systems located in the PRC (because they will) that this foot in the door will not give them leverage to penetrate the rest of the system located in the US and EU?

AC did you forget how some big US brands helped?
"... handed the NSA access to encrypted messages" (12 Jul ‘13) https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
"pre-encryption stage access to email"
"had tripled the amount of Skype video calls being collected"
"routinely shared with the FBI and CIA, with one NSA document describing the program as a "team sport"."
"helped the NSA to circumvent its encryption"

The Chinese DC's are isolated. All network traffic from the Chinese DC to the other DCs are whitelisted (from the non-China DC), with a long process involved to get anything added to the whitelist. Typically, only backup, migration, and monitoring are allowed. No keying material valid in a non-China-DC is allowed in the Chinese DCs. This means that any migrations will involve reencryption with new keys. Automated and manual audits of inter-D

The national internet is a China wide intranet.
Want to invest and build a brand in China? Laws are clear about how encryption will be used, the needs of law enforcement.
All international networks in and out are tracked back to see if they are a VPN thats new, unknown to the gov and mil in China.
Some VPN's will work in China at full speed and without question. Why? The government gets to se all its own citizens who are trying to use the service.
For that agreement foreigners get to feel like the VPN i

China will not accept your freedoms.
Your brand accepts the laws under the Communist party in China.

What did the West think it would be like? All Tiananmen Square like with a digital democratic civil society forming around the US brand?
Communist governments do not allow freedom in. Communism controls brands so Communism has no competitors that can spread democracy and freedom.

All the big tech companies seem to be in a giant rush to knuckle under to totalitarian regimes, and I'm not sure who's worse at this point. Google, whose motto seems to be "Sure, Be Evil!" or Apple, who is about to turn over all the records for every Chinese Apple customer to the Chinese Government?

This question is one I've genuinely struggled with... should private companies refuse to do business with totalitarian regimes like China? I used to think "yes", but how well did that really work out for us with Cuba? Refusing to engage in commerce doesn't seem to meaningfully affect regime change any more than bombing cities won WWII (at least by itself) - it mostly just makes people even more miserable.

In the case of Apple, it's not like refusing to allow iCloud services to Chinese citizens will somehow

Absolutely not. A billion of people in China can make their government accountable if they choose to. In the meantime, we are struggling to make our own government accountable (hi Snowden). Telling everyone on the planet how to live should not be on the top of our priority list.

All the big tech companies seem to be in a giant rush to knuckle under to totalitarian regimes,

oh, are you referring to the USA?

and I'm not sure who's worse at this point. Google, whose motto seems to be "Sure, Be Evil!" or Apple, who is about to turn over all the records for every Chinese Apple customer to the Chinese Government?

.... and out of the prying eyes of the NSA and the CIA... or had you not noticed the reports here on slashdot about mass-surveillance of U.S. Citizens?

All the big tech companies seem to be in a giant rush to knuckle under to totalitarian regimes, and I'm not sure who's worse at this point. Google, whose motto seems to be "Sure, Be Evil!" or Apple, who is about to turn over all the records for every Chinese Apple customer to the Chinese Government?

Huh. I was modded to oblivion here just the other day for saying that China is an evil totalitarian regime.

It was a different context though. It was about China censoring unapproved points of view. I was pointing out that that is just what evil totalitarian regimes do.

Apple is being pushed around by the Chinese government. They really need to begin building automated plants in the US. China can suck it. The fall of the Western world started when we gave China the know-how and resources to build our cheap stuff more cheaply. Then they moved on t to better stuff. Now they're controlling the whole system. Apple will eventually lose much of their company if they stay in China. Get out now. Apple: you can survive on Western profits, you sellouts.

Apple is being pushed around by the Chinese government. They really need to begin building automated plants in the US. China can suck it. The fall of the Western world started when we gave China the know-how and resources to build our cheap stuff more cheaply. Then they moved on t to better stuff. Now they're controlling the whole system. Apple will eventually lose much of their company if they stay in China. Get out now. Apple: you can survive on Western profits, you sellouts.

Why not? Because then their profit margin on their $1000+ phones would only be 99.5% instead of 99.9%.

Which is a bad thing. The NSA and CIA are foreign intelligence agencies, spying on other countries is their job. Spying on Americans is what they aren't allowed to do, spying on the Chinese is what they're for.

The biggest problem here isn't even about government spying, it's that China won't let Apple do business without handing control to the Chinese government.